Australian author: increasing public awareness about ovarian Ca can have downside

The Croakey blog posts a column by Marian Pitts, Director of the
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at LaTrobe
University. She writes:

"On an almost daily basis we are bombarded with health
messages, many of them encouraging us to monitor ourselves for worrying
signs that might be signals of an underlying problem.

Ovarian cancer is the latest in a long line of such concerns. It is
the sixth most common cause of cancer death in Australia; and it has a
poor five-year survival rate of only 42%. Many cases of ovarian cancer
are undiagnosed until an advanced stage of the disease.

Against this backdrop, a National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre
survey has shown that one in five women can't name one symptom of
ovarian cancer.

This has formed the basis of a public health campaign to raise awareness of the cancer and its associated symptoms.

The trouble is that the symptoms that may signal an underlying cancer
are vague, non-specific and, as our study has found, extremely common
in the general population.

... How can we deliver a message that does not just increase women's
anxiety, lead to unnecessary consultations and, in some cases, lead to
unnecessary interventions and investigations?

We may be doing more harm than good to the general population, in our
understandable desire to detect this so-called silent killer early
enough to improve survival rates."

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